Her Ultimate Prize
by SuperKateB
Summary: For her entire life, Meiou Setsuna has worked to save the world from evil and its influence. But when the world is safe and years pass, what does she have left?


I stared down at the invitation in my hands, surprised at my own blanketed,   
  
unemotional response. When had I become so amazingly impassive, so disinterested, so   
  
uncaring? And how long could I last like this before I found myself completely and totally  
  
on my own, without another human being in my life?  
  
Crumpling the silver-white paper, I lobbed it into the garbage can and moved on to  
  
the next piece of mail in the pile.  
  
Then again, what did it matter?  
  
====================  
  
"Her Ultimate Prize"  
  
A Sailor Moon Fanfiction  
  
Written by Kate "SuperKate" Butler  
  
====================  
  
Five or six years ago, it was announced that the planet Earth, the only known   
  
life-supporting planet in the entire, endless universe, had reached a landmark of human  
  
population. Six billion individual human beings, each unique in personality and DNA structure,  
  
were wandering around the roughly twenty percent of our globe that was livable land, going  
  
to jobs and raising families, roughing it or making it big, and all in the name of the   
  
one human experience diverse enough to apply to everyone:  
  
Love.  
  
Looking down from the small apartment that I shared with my black, long-haired   
  
tomcat, I watched the ant-like residents of Tokyo bustle about the streets, rushing from   
  
place to place, busying themselves with their everyday activities, making due with things  
  
the way they were. Charon purred contentedly in my lap, a furry hot pad stretched across  
  
my stomach as I watched the humans below, oddly discontent with my normal afternoon   
  
routine of silent, peaceful observing. Somehow, the invitation had ruptured my schedule,   
  
torn my mind's photograph of how my day should be, and left me wrapped up in my thoughts,  
  
very much alone in the ever-silent apartment.  
  
It was not as though I was surprised. It was the sixth invitation of the sort I had  
  
received in the last six years, and I had at least seen this one coming before it'd arrived  
  
at my doorstep. Haruka, in a rather unexpected bolt of human concern, had actually called me  
  
a few weeks earlier, gushing about the young man that her adopted daughter was planning on  
  
marrying. I tried desperately, both then and now, to find some sort of supportive, motherly  
  
joy for the young woman who I still considered a girl... But that feeling of shared elation  
  
never came. I'm completely sure that Haruka had never expected that emotion from me in the  
  
first place, which was the main reason why I didn't feel the least bit guilty for throwing  
  
the wedding invitation away. Just as I hadn't felt guilty about throwing the other five  
  
away.  
  
The hardest had been the first, of course. Not hard because I wasn't happy for the   
  
young couple; if there had ever been a couple I was truly happy for, it was Tsukino   
  
Usagi and Chiba Mamoru. It was more just that I didn't know if I could take all the inherent  
  
sweetness in their lives, the overwhelming adorable joy that just radiated around them. So  
  
I had declined politely and buried myself in my work at the high school, utilizing my long-  
  
standing procrastination in sorting the nursing files that I was supposed to keep tidy as a   
  
perfect excuse to avoid attending. Usagi fought me, as stubborn as ever, but somehow I won.  
  
Michiru's disappointment was perhaps the only thing I really regretted about my actions,  
  
and even then...  
  
Even then, I wasn't really sorry.  
  
Kumada Yuuichiro and Hino Rei were the next happy couple to send me a pretty   
  
invitation to what I can only assume was a beautiful ceremony. Rei-chan had always been a   
  
graceful, intelligent young lady, and it pained me to avoid her phone calls for the weeks  
  
after my regrets card had been "lost in the mail." When I finally did answer her call, I  
  
assured her it was nothing personal, but that my budget was tight and I really couldn't  
  
afford an appropriate outfit for such an occasion. And no, I would not let her - the blushing  
  
bride-to-be - pay for it. It would be tacky, or so I claimed. I never really understood why I   
  
developed such a natural avoidance to attending the wedding of a woman I was perhaps more  
  
fond of than I was of even Usagi, but I rationalized that my budget really was tight, and  
  
that I wouldn't have a particularly good time, anyway.   
  
Besides, wasn't it rude to not bring a date when the invitation was addressed to   
  
yourself and a guest?  
  
I had never met Ryo Urawa when the woman he is now married to, Mizuno Ami, sent out  
  
her wedding invitations. He had been mentioned a few times in the past as Ami's long-time  
  
suitor, a resident of Kyoto who was, as the story told, nearly as bright as his girlfriend.  
  
No one bothered to question me when I never responded to the invitation, though Michiru -   
  
chosen as a bridesmaid over an extremely pregnant Usagi - pressed the matter of my avoidance  
  
of a third wedding over dinner one night. I dodged the subject quietly, arguing that I felt  
  
out of place at such events, and she refused to argue any further. What was the point of   
  
arguing, after all? She did call later to tell me what a beautiful ceremony it had been, and  
  
how delighted she was to have been a part of it. She wondered if I had bothered sending a   
  
card, but I never answered the question.  
  
We both knew the answer was a rather flat-out "no."  
  
At least for Aino Minako's wedding, I had a valid excuse; her extravagant invitation  
  
advertised an enormous ceremony that was to be held in England, where her ex-detective   
  
fiancé was located. I'd just moved out of the small house that Haruka, Michiru, Hotaru, and   
  
I had shared for the last four years, opting for my own warm little apartment in the city.  
  
My reasoning was because I wanted to be closer to work, but both the adults I resided with  
  
gave some indication that they expected it to be because I was tired of living with a couple  
  
when I myself was single. I never bothered to tell them otherwise, though I asked them   
  
kindly to express my regrets to Minako and her beau when they attended the wedding, and to  
  
assure her that my reasoning really was because money was too tight. They assured me they   
  
would, and I recycled the invitation with the morning newspaper the next day.  
  
I never heard from Minako again, but I hadn't expected to, either.  
  
Kino Makoto married Asanuma Itto in a rather bland ceremony, or so I heard tell after  
  
the fact. I had gotten a silver-accented envelope a few months before the news of their  
  
wedding but hadn't bothered opening it. Haruka, who had always been strangely fond of the  
  
brunette in what I will always argue was a girlish crush, bothered me constantly for why I   
  
would throw something like that away, not honestly believing when I told her I had mistaken  
  
it for another pointless piece of junk mail. I hadn't honestly expected her to believe me,  
  
anyway. There was no point in believing a lie of such messy proportions. I stopped trying  
  
to make excuses, to come up with good reasons for why not. I just shrugged it off.  
  
What was the point? Was there ever a point?  
  
And now, the marriage of Tomoe Hotaru to a young man from her university class.   
  
I sighed heavily, and the unexpected motion woke my cat from his blissful, feline slumber.  
  
He glanced up at me through half-opened, yellow-green cat's eyes, yawning languidly.  
  
Then, like a slip of black silk, he slid from my lap and slunk off, through the living room  
  
and into the hallway, no doubt to find a warm - and motionless - bed to lie on.   
  
I frowned as I watched him go, finding myself to be very much alone.  
  
Over six billion people in the world, and I was the only one I knew who was alone.  
  
I'd abandoned my school nurse gig to pick up simple secretarial work after my move into the  
  
city, only to find that all my coworkers were either happily married or contentedly dating.  
  
My boss actually had six children to call his own, the oldest being a first-year high school  
  
student and the youngest still wearing diapers. He loved all of them with a furious passion,  
  
and had long ago declared that each of their birthdays was to be an office holiday.   
  
My withdrawal from society, or at least from the people I had once cared so much  
  
about, seemed almost appropriate. It was peculiar to admit something so isolating, so   
  
painful, so basely depressing, but it really was true. With Charon happily snoozing on my  
  
comforter in my room, I tossed on my jacket and started on a walk, trudging my way through  
  
the throngs of window-shoppers on my uptown street. How could one woman become so isolated  
  
from everyone else? I had never worked to live a life on my own, and yet, here I was. Long  
  
green hair ruffled and mussed by a late-fall wind as I strolled down the sidewalk, hands  
  
in my coat pockets, face drawn into a frown.   
  
How could one person live her whole life alone? And even if it wasn't her whole  
  
life, how could any one person live even part of her life alone? What kind of life was that?  
  
What kind of world was that?  
  
My life had always been defined by battles and wars, by the past as it mingled with  
  
the future, by the threads of time and fate as they wove together into a bright and vibrant  
  
tapestry of life and love. But the battles were over, the wars lost and won, and all the   
  
gods and generals had received their rewards, the spoils from the battle.  
  
And then, there was the one forgotten soldier, left to the darkness around her,   
  
forgotten.  
  
Meiou Setsuna. One of six billion names in the world. Five syllables holding an   
  
entire identity in their grasp. The street light changed to walk and I stepped out onto the  
  
asphalt, my hard-soled shoes clacking against the pavement as I went. A man brushed   
  
shoulders with me on one side, headed toward where I had come, while a school girl, no   
  
doubt hurrying to get home on time, pushed around me in order to get ahead of the rest of  
  
the people from our side of the street.  
  
Is this who I am? A woman walking down the street, brushing shoulders with strangers,  
  
thinking of her tomcat and the typing that she'd taken home in hopes of finishing up? Is this  
  
the person I was meant to be, the person I will always be, the human who had won a war for  
  
the "good guys" only to end up one of six billion, a statistic, another dot on the map?  
  
Is this what I have fought my entire life for? Loneliness? Wedding invitations   
  
coming from people who will never understand my pain? Friends who will never feel the despair  
  
of knowing that they will wake up alone for the rest of their miserably immortal lives?   
  
Is this it? Is this all there is to this world? Have I received all the love I can  
  
have? Will there never be anything more?  
  
Is this it? Is this all? Is this what I get for fighting so hard?  
  
Well?   
  
Is THIS the prize I've waited for?  
  
===  
  
Fin.  
  
Author's note: Just a one-part Setsuna fic idea that came to me very late at night. I   
  
couldn't help but wonder to myself how Setsuna feels about her immortality and the seeming  
  
lack of love she gets from anyone else. It always seems to me that Setsuna is very isolated,  
  
even with the other outers around, and that she's excluded from the on-going bond that   
  
really has defined the rest of the senshi. Especially in the manga continuity, though I have  
  
to admit that I have not read all of the manga yet.  
  
I have combined bits and pieces of the manga and anime to make this fit, however. In the  
  
manga, Yuuichiro and Urawa do not exist, but I needed them in the storyline in order to   
  
make Rei and Ami have male counterparts. The "ex-detective" of Minako's is Alan from the  
  
Sailor V storyline, if you know anything about that; we're pretending that they somehow   
  
met again, okay? I realize this is a continuity issue, but I wanted to make the concept  
  
work. Beyond those three facts, this is a manga story, and is to be considered as such.   
  
This is also a little exercise in seeing if I can write Setsuna. I have a lofty goal of   
  
writing a long, multi-part fic for each of the senshi, and Setsuna's is one of the ones  
  
I'm really starting to put together in my head. Rei's, of course, is finished ("Inori" being  
  
her fic), and I'm currently in progress on the Michiru one. Which leaves me with, you know,  
  
a trillion fics to write, but we're going to overlook my stupidity here.  
  
Special thanks to Yumeko, my ever-wonderful beta reader (not writer). ^^   
  
June 9, 2003.  
  
2:51 a.m. 


End file.
